Dead of Night
by UltimateParadox
Summary: On the night before everything ended, staying up late playing games seemed like a perfectly normal thing. Blanket rating.


**Dead of Night**

_"On the night before everything ended, I was up late."_

His ear under the headset itched. Takashi tried to wiggle his finger in between his flesh and the plastic casing without disturbing the piece, but it only half worked. As the device was dangling off his ear, he heard Morita's voice crackle something.

"What?" Takashi asked as he put the headset right, scrambling to get both hands on the controller just in time to avoid his character's imminent pummeling. His TV's speakers spat gunshots as he hit the trigger button, eliminating the godless abominations that screeched and moaned on screen.

"I said, 'Sorry, man'," the ear piece replied. "Oh, nice shot."

Takashi frowned as he saw Morita's online connection drop a bar. He hoped Morita wouldn't drop from the game. He was the host, after all.

"Thanks. What are you apologizing for? Man, you didn't plant a mine near my guy, did you?"

Morita laughed. "No, but that would have been funny. Mines do cause a lot of zombie destruction, though."

"Morita."

"Right, sorry. About Miyamoto. That's what I meant."

Rei. Takashi inhaled sharply. No doubt Morita had heard it. The kid had better equipment than he did. Takashi...didn't really want to talk about Rei, not when the memory of her hand locked in Hisashi's was still so painfully fresh.

"Don't trouble yourself, Morita. Hey, watch your back."

Apparently the warning didn't come soon enough. Takashi watched Morita's avatar fumble with a wave of undead targets. He aimed his machine gun at the rabble and held down the trigger. Little yellow-orange flashes blasted on the screen and the enemies fell like bricks.

"Man, Komuro, do you even know how good you are at aiming? 'Cause if you had shot me in all that, I was gonna be pissed!" Morita crackled with good humor.

"Aiming? Morita, this is a handheld controller. Give me a real gun and I'd probably be worse than _actors_. I'd be the first one dead in a zombie apocalypse." Takashi groused.

"And I'll live forever. I'll rescue Takagi and we'll fall in love and descend down the sinner's path of survival!" Morita cheered. "Man, that sounds awesome. Except that you'd be dead, of course. Not so awesome."

Takashi grinned slightly. He couldn't believe that Morita was so enamored with Saya. Did he have a dominatrix fetish or something? A little sadism and masochism? He still didn't have the heart to tell poor Morita that he knew Saya personally, and that, really, Morita had no idea what he was trying to stick his dick into. "With your attitude, you are definitely the kind of guy to live forever."

"Hell yeah! Oh, hey, Igou's on," Morita said. Takashi knew; he and Hisashi were friends, dwindling friends, and he saw the notification pop onto his game screen as well. "Should I invite him for a round?"

Bad blood is a bad thing, Takashi told himself. "Yeah, sure. It's not like I _hate_ Hisashi, Morita." Even as he said it, he wasn't sure of himself.

"Should I get him on the mic, too?"

Takashi wanted to say no. "We're all friends here, right?" He cursed himself for not saying it.

Morita chuckled. "I guess."

There was a span of silence before something began loading on his screen. Takashi saw Hisashi's character form in stages (mesh, blocks, final) and heard a rise in static from his headset. He grimaced. Even in a damned video game, Hisashi was better than him. His stats burned themselves into some Hisashi-related complex at the back of his mind.

"Morita, Takashi. Sorry to interrupt your game." Hisashi's baritone voice filtered to Takashi's ears. His stomach felt cold and heavy, but aggravatingly empty. Rei had chosen Hisashi over him, and it hurt no matter what he tried to sooth the pain away with.

"No worries, bro."

"Yeah," Takashi swallowed. "It's not a problem."

"It's kind of late, Igou. What've you been doing?" Morita asked.

"Ah, sorry," he heard Hisashi crackle. Takashi felt bad that even in online gaming, Hisashi couldn't beat him at sounding good through the speaker and that he took joy in that. Not that Takashi was better in that department, it was just that Hisashi _wasn't_. "Rei and I were watching an old movie. You know the kind: B-movie zombies that people watch purely because they want to laugh at them."

...He missed Rei.

"And now you're here to cap zombies! Very nice. I approve," Morita crowed.

...Takashi missed his and Morita's two-man camaraderie, too.

But Takashi held his tongue, gripped the controller a little tighter. This probably wasn't healthy, but he couldn't find the passion to care.

So the game began without incident. Morita always screamed something loud and indiscernible when things got royally screwed on his end, but Takashi paid him no mind. His only goal was to beat Hisashi's score. It was a petty, invisible victory when he did, but more often than not Takashi lost his unspoken challenge. Sometimes he wondered if Hisashi was doing this on purpose.

Time ticked away in chunks. So absorbed in the mindless purging of zombies, Takashi couldn't properly keep track. It wasn't until he heard both Morita _and_ Hisashi start yawning that he realized that the hour hand had drifted right through twelve o'clock.

"Hey, guys," Morita finally said with a lull in his voice. "I'm beat. You guys still gonna play? You'll need a new host, because this one's hitting the sack."

"Don't hit too hard, you'll hurt yourself," Takashi bit out before he realized that even _he_ wasn't that impressed with such a crass joke.

But Morita laughed anyway. "You dick. Fuck yourself. Good night, you losers."

"Says the guy with the lowest score," Hisashi replied.

"Shut up. Hey, Komuro, I'll see you at school tomorrow, ya? And maybe you, too, Igou."

"Sounds good," Takashi mumbled. "Good night."

"Later."

And the fuzzy static of Morita's microphone clicked away until Takashi was left unsettled with Hisashi. Even though they weren't in person, he still felt like he was drowning in Hisashi's shadow.

"I suppose...I'll go to sleep, too, Takashi. I'll probably see you at school, unless you're skipping again." Hisashi said through a yawn.

Skipping sounded like an absolutely wonderful idea. He'd text Morita to join him after he'd safely escaped from the teachers and chalk-scented classrooms. "Yeah, sure. Bye, Hisashi."

And with another click, Takashi was left alone. He jerked his head forward and the headset slipped from its grasp on his head, clinging desperately at his neck. He stayed like that until the midnight black skies began to blue with the 4 o'clock hour, and that was when sleep finally claimed him.


End file.
